When Winnie-the-Pooh was published in the fall of 1926, it was an instant smash hit, selling 150,000 copies in time for Christmas and soon airing regularly on BBC radio. But in the months leading up to publication, its illustrator, E. H. Shepard, was still mulling over details, working out the shape of Piglet and the exact size of Pooh’s stomach.

This sketch work is on show in a pair of previously unseen drawings that have been brought forward by Shepard’s family on the centenary of the children’s classic. The two pencil drawings depict scenes from the original A.A. Milne book that ultimately remained unpictured and are on display at Peter Harrington Rare Books on Dover Street in London.

E.H. Shepard, Climbing Very Cautiously Up the Stream (1926). Photo: courtesy Peter Harrington Rare Books.

The first drawing, titled “Climbing very cautiously up the stream”, shows an intrepid Christopher Robin leading the way followed by Pooh, Piglet, and Owl. You can sense the speed at which Shepard worked with the characters’ outlines, as well as the surrounding scenery, rendered in loose, swift pencil marks. The drawing was intended for Chapter VIII in which Christopher Robin leads his friends hopscotching upstream on a “expotition” to the north pole.

E.H. Shepard, Pooh and Piglet Tracking Woozles (1926). Photo courtesy Peter Harrington Rare Books.

The second is a small and tender portrayal from Chapter III of Pooh and Piglet tracking Woozles, the weasel-like honey-stealing rogues that haunt Pooh’s dreams. There are no Woozles in sight, just Pooh and Piglet looking out over a blank landscape. The raw and undeveloped nature of the drawings is also reflected in what’s missing. Shepard’s process involved drawing in pencil and then adding graphite to the reverse so that they could be transferred to an artist’s board and rendered in ink. Both drawings, which are priced at £9,000 ($12,200) each, have no graphite on the back.

“It is extraordinarily rare to encounter preliminary drawings of Winnie-the-Pooh that capture what might be called the first moment of inspiration—the instant where Shepard is thinking through movement, character, and narrative in pencil alone,” Philip Errington, a specialist at Peter Harrington, said in a statement. “What makes these two drawings so compelling is that they were never taken beyond the sketch stage.”

E.H. Shepard, Here’s Christopher Robin and Somebody Bounces You Loudly From Behind… (1928). Photo courtesy Peter Harrington Rare Books.

The pair of unrealized drawings is joined at Peter Harrington by a selection of preliminary sketches that did ultimately appear in Pooh books, as well as Shepard illustrations connected to appearances in magazines and broadsides in the late 1920s.

The side-by-side of Christopher Robin striding along while gazing at an apple and an exuberant Tigger bouncing into a rather rotund Eeyore—which were developed into illustrations that made it into The House at Pooh Corner (1928)—is priced at £30,000 ($40,700). A charming preliminary drawing from the same year depicting Christopher in discussion with his full complement of friends was developed into a color plate for the weekly magazine, Home Chat, and is priced at £24,000 ($35,500).

With some of the drawings seemingly torn directly out of Shepard’s sketchbooks, Peter Harrington is promising “exceptional acquisition opportunity.” Although some of Shepard’s drawings were sold during the 1920s, most of his Pooh illustrations were donated to the Victoria & Albert Museum in 1969, a collection that was on display in the 2017 exhibition “Winnie-the-Pooh: Exploring a Classic.”

In 2018, a framed ink drawing of The Original Map of the Hundred Acre Wood by Shepard sold at Sotheby’s London for £430,000 ($568,760). Later this month, the rare books specialists will bring a selection of Pooh drawings, including two of the earliest and least known drawings of the beloved bear, to the New York International Antiquarian Book Fair.